Psychology of the Unconscious · Part XI

That we were correct in our assumption that, in Miss Miller, it is a question of the battle for independence is shown by her statement that the hero’s departure from his father’s house reminds her of the fate of the young Buddha, who likewise renounced all luxury to which he was born in order to go out into the world to live out his destiny to its completion. Buddha gave the same heroic example as did Christ, who separated from his mother, and even spoke bitter words (Matthew, chap. x. v. 34):

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

(35) “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

(36) “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

(37) “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”

Or Luke, chap. xii, v. 51:

“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay: but rather division.

(52) “For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.

(53) “The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

Horus snatched from his mother her head adornment, the power. Just as Adam struggled with Lilith, so he struggles for power. Nietzsche, in “Human, All Too Human,” expressed the same in very beautiful words:

“One may suppose that a mind, in which the ‘type of free mind’ is to ripen and sweeten at maturity, has had its decisive crisis in a great detachment, so that before this time it was just so much the more a fettered spirit and appeared chained forever to its corner and its pillar.[629] What binds it most firmly? What cords are almost untearable? Among human beings of a high and exquisite type, it would be duties: that reverence, which is suitable for youth, that modesty and tenderness for all the old honored and valued things, that thankfulness for the earth from which they grew, for the hand which guided them, for the shrine where they learnt to pray:—their loftiest moments themselves come to bind them the firmest, to obligate them the most permanently. The great detachment comes suddenly for people so bound.

“‘Better to die than to live here,’—thus rings the imperative voice of seduction: and this here, this ‘at home’ is all, that it (the soul) has loved until now! A sudden terror and suspicion against that which it has loved, a lightning flash of scorn towards that which is called ‘duty,’ a rebellious, arbitrary, volcanic, impelling desire for travelling, for strange countries, estrangements, coolness, frigidity, disillusionments, a hatred of love, perhaps a sacrilegious touch and glance backwards[630] there where just now it adored and loved, perhaps a blush of shame over what it has just done, and at the same time an exultation over having done it, an intoxicating internal joyous thrill, in which a victory reveals itself—a victory? Over what? Over whom? An enigmatic, doubtful, questioning victory, but the first triumph. Of such woe and pain is formed the history of the great detachment. It is like a disease which can destroy men,—this first eruption of strength and will towards self-assertion.”[631]

The danger lies, as is brilliantly expressed by Nietzsche, in isolation in one’s self:

“Solitude surrounds and embraces him ever more threatening, ever more constricting, ever more heart-strangling, the terrible Goddess and Mater sæva cupidinum.”

The libido taken away from the mother, who is abandoned only reluctantly, becomes threatening as a serpent, the symbol of death, for the relation to the mother must cease, must die, which itself almost causes man’s death. In “Mater sæva cupidinum” the idea attains rare, almost conscious, perfection.

I do not presume to try to paint in better words than has Nietzsche the psychology of the wrench from childhood.

Miss Miller furnishes us with a further reference to a material which has influenced her creation in a more general manner; this is the great Indian epic of Longfellow, “The Song of Hiawatha.”

If my readers have had patience to read thus far, and to reflect upon what they have read, they frequently must have wondered at the number of times I introduce for comparison such apparently foreign material and how often I widen the base upon which Miss Miller’s creations rest. Doubts must often have arisen whether it is justifiable to enter into important discussions concerning the psychologic foundations of myths, religions and culture in general on the basis of such scanty suggestions. It might be said that behind the Miller phantasies such a thing is scarcely to be found. I need hardly emphasize the fact that I, too, have sometimes been in doubt. I had never read “Hiawatha” until, in the course of my work, I came to this part. “Hiawatha,” a poetical compilation of Indian myths, gives me, however, a justification for all preceding reflections, because this epic contains an unusual number of mythologic problems. This fact is probably of great importance for the wealth of suggestions in the Miller phantasies. We are, therefore, compelled to obtain an insight into this epic.

Nawadaha sings the songs of the epic of the hero Hiawatha, the friend of man:

“There he sang of Hiawatha, Sang the songs of Hiawatha, Sang his wondrous birth and being, How he prayed and how he fasted, How he lived and toiled and suffered, That the tribes of men might prosper, That he might advance his people.”

The teleological meaning of the hero, as that symbolic figure which unites in itself libido in the form of admiration and adoration, in order to lead to higher sublimations by way of the symbolic bridges of the myths, is anticipated here. Thus we become quickly acquainted with Hiawatha as a savior, and are prepared to hear all that which must be said of a savior, of his marvellous birth, of his early great deeds, and his sacrifice for his fellow-men.

The first song begins with a fragment of evangelism: Gitche Manito, the “master of life,” tired of the quarrels of his human children, calls his people together and makes known to them the joyous message:

“I will send a prophet to you, A Deliverer of the nations, Who shall guide you and shall teach you, Who shall toil and suffer with you. If you listen to his counsels, You will multiply and prosper. If his warnings pass unheeded, You will fade away and perish!”

Gitche Manito, the Mighty, “the creator of the nations,” is represented as he stood erect “on the great Red Pipestone quarry.”

“From his footprints flowed a river, Leaped into the light of morning, O’er the precipice plunging downward Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.”

The water flowing from his footsteps sufficiently proves the phallic nature of this creator. I refer to the earlier utterances concerning the phallic and fertilizing nature of the horse’s foot and the horse’s steps, and especially do I recall Hippocrene and the foot of Pegasus.[632] We meet with the same idea in Psalm lxv, vv. 9 to 11:

“Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it; thou makest it very plenteous.

“The river of God is full of water; thou preparest their corn, for so thou providest for the earth.

“Thou waterest her furrows: thou sendest rain into the little valleys thereof; thou makest it soft with the drops of rain, and blessest the increase of it.

“Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.”

Wherever the fertilizing God steps, there is fruitfulness. We already have spoken of the symbolic meaning of treading in discussing the nightmares. Kaineus passes into the depths, “splitting the earth with a foot outstretched.” Amphiaraus, another chthonic hero, sinks into the earth, which Zeus has opened for him by a stroke of lightning. (Compare with that the above-mentioned vision of a hysterical patient, who saw a black horse after a flash of lightning: identity of horse’s footstep and flash of lightning.) By means of a flash of lightning heroes were made immortal.[633] Faust attained the mothers when he stamped his foot.

“Stamp and descend, stamping thou’lt rise again.”

The heroes in the sun-devouring myths often stamp at or struggle in the jaws of the monster. Thus Tor stamped through the ship’s bottom in battle with the monster, and went as far as the bottom of the sea. (Kaineus.) (Concerning “kicking” as an infantile phantasy, see above.) The regression of the libido to the presexual stage makes this preparatory action of treading either a substitution for the coitus phantasy or for the phantasy of re-entrance into the mother’s womb. The comparison of water flowing from the footsteps with a comet is a light symbolism for the fructifying moisture (sperma). According to an observation by Humboldt (Kosmos), certain South American Indian tribes call the meteors “urine of the stars.” Mention is also made of how Gitche Manito makes fire. He blows upon a forest, so that the trees, rubbing upon each other, burst into flame. This demon is, therefore, an excellent libido symbol; he also produced fire.

After this prologue in the second song, the hero’s previous history is related. The great warrior, Mudjekeewis (Hiawatha’s father), has cunningly overcome the great bear, “the terror of the nations,” and stolen from him the magic “belt of wampum,” a girdle of shells. Here we meet the motive of the “treasure attained with difficulty,” which the hero rescues from the monster. Who the bear is, is shown by the poet’s comparisons. Mudjekeewis strikes the bear on his head after he has robbed him of the treasure.

“With the heavy blow bewildered Rose the great Bear of the mountains, But his knees beneath him trembled, And he whimpered like a woman.”

Mudjekeewis said derisively to him:

“Else you would not cry, and whimper, Like a miserable woman!

· · · · ·

But you, Bear! sit here and whimper, And disgrace your tribe by crying, Like a wretched Shaugodaya, Like a cowardly old woman!”

These three comparisons with a woman are to be found near each other on the same page. Mudjekeewis has, like a true hero, once more torn life from the jaws of death, from the all-devouring “terrible mother.” This deed, which, as we have seen, is also represented as a journey to hell, “night journey through the sea,” the conquering of the monster from within, signifies at the same time entrance into the mother’s womb, a rebirth, the results of which are perceptible also for Mudjekeewis. As in the Zosimos vision, here too the entering one becomes the breath of the wind or spirit. Mudjekeewis becomes the west wind, the fertilizing breath, the father of winds.[634] His sons become the other winds. An intermezzo tells of them and of their love stories, of which I will mention only the courtship of Wabuns, the East Wind, because here the erotic wooing of the wind is pictured in an especially beautiful manner. Every morning he sees a beautiful girl in a meadow, whom he eagerly courts:

“Every morning, gazing earthward, Still the first thing he beheld there Was her blue eyes looking at him, Two blue lakes among the rushes.”

The comparison with water is not a matter of secondary importance, because “from wind and water” shall man be born anew.

“And he wooed her with caresses, Wooed her with his smile of sunshine, With his flattering words he wooed her, With his sighing and his singing, Gentlest whispers in the branches, Softest music, sweetest odors,” etc.

In these onomatopoetic verses the wind’s caressing courtship is excellently expressed.[635]

The third song presents the previous history of Hiawatha’s mother. His grandmother, when a maiden, lived in the moon. There she once swung upon a liana, but a jealous lover cut off the liana, and Nokomis, Hiawatha’s grandmother, fell to earth. The people, who saw her fall downwards, thought that she was a shooting star. This marvellous descent of Nokomis is more plainly illustrated by a later passage of this same song; there little Hiawatha asks the grandmother what is the moon. Nokomis teaches him about it as follows: The moon is the body of a grandmother, whom a warlike grandson has cast up there in wrath. Hence the moon is the grandmother. In ancient beliefs, the moon is also the gathering place of departed souls,[636] the guardian of seeds; therefore, once more a place of the origin of life of predominantly feminine significance. The remarkable thing is that Nokomis, falling upon the earth, gave birth to a daughter, Wenonah, subsequently the mother of Hiawatha. The throwing upwards of the mother, and her falling down and bringing forth, seems to contain something typical in itself. Thus a story of the seventeenth century relates that a mad bull threw a pregnant woman as high as a house, and tore open her womb, and the child fell without harm upon the earth. On account of his wonderful birth, this child was considered a hero or doer of miracles, but he died at an early age. The belief is widespread among lower savages that the sun is feminine and the moon masculine. Among the Namaqua, a Hottentot tribe, the opinion is prevalent that the sun consists of transparent bacon.

“The people, who journey on boats, draw it down by magic every evening, cut off a suitable piece and then give it a kick so that it flies up again into the sky.”—Waitz: “Anthropologie,” II, 342.

The infantile nourishment comes from the mother. In the Gnostic phantasies we come across a legend of the origin of man which possibly belongs here: the female archons bound to the vault of Heaven are unable, on account of its quick rotation, to keep their young within them, but let them fall upon the earth, from which men arise. Possibly there is here a connection with barbaric midwifery, the letting fall of the parturient. The assault upon the mother is already introduced with the adventure of Mudjekeewis, and is continued in the violent handling of the “grandmother,” Nokomis, who, as a result of the cutting of the liana and the fall downwards, seems in some way to have become pregnant. The “cutting of the branch,” the plucking, we have already recognized as mother incest. (See above.) That well-known verse, “Saxonland, where beautiful maidens grow upon trees,” and phrases like “picking cherries in a neighbor’s garden,” allude to a similar idea. The fall downwards of Nokomis deserves to be compared to a poetical figure in Heine.

“A star, a star is falling Out of the glittering sky! The star of Love! I watch it Sink in the depths and die.

“The leaves and buds are falling From many an apple-tree; I watch the mirthful breezes Embrace them wantonly...”

Wenonah later was courted by the caressing West Wind, and becomes pregnant. Wenonah, as a young moon-goddess, has the beauty of the moonlight. Nokomis warns her of the dangerous courtship of Mudjekeewis, the West Wind. But Wenonah allows herself to become infatuated, and conceives from the breath of the wind, from the πνεῦμα, a son, our hero.

“And the West-Wind came at evening,

· · · · ·

Found the beautiful Wenonah, Lying there amid the lilies, Wooed her with his words of sweetness, Wooed her with his soft caresses, Till she bore a son in sorrow, Bore a son of love and sorrow.”

Fertilization through the breath of the spirit is already a well-known precedent for us. The star or comet plainly belongs to the birth scene as a libido symbol; Nokomis, too, comes to earth as a shooting star. Mörike’s sweet poetic phantasy has devised a similar divine origin.

“And she who bore me in her womb, And gave me food and clothing. She was a maid—a wild, brown maid, Who looked on men with loathing.

“She fleered at them and laughed out loud, And bade no suitor tarry; ‘I’d rather be the Wind’s own bride Than have a man and marry.’

“Then came the Wind and held her fast His captive, love-enchanted; And lo, by him a merry child Within her womb was planted.”

Buddha’s marvellous birth story, retold by Sir Edwin Arnold, also shows traces of this.[637]

“Maya, the Queen ... Dreamed a strange dream, dreamed that a star from heaven— Splendid, six-rayed, in color rosy-pearl, Whereof the token was an Elephant Six-tusked and white as milk of Kamadhuk— Shot through the void; and shining into her, Entered her womb upon the right.”[638]

During Maya’s conception a wind blows over the land:

“A wind blew With unknown freshness over lands and seas.”

After the birth the four genii of the East, West, South and North come to render service as bearers of the palanquin. (The coming of the wise men at Christ’s birth.) We also find here a distinct reference to the “four winds.” For the completion of the symbolism there is to be found in the Buddha myth, as well as in the birth legend of Christ, besides the impregnation by star and wind, also the fertilization by an animal, here an elephant, which with its phallic trunk fulfilled in Maya the Christian method of fructification through the ear or the head. It is well known that, in addition to the dove, the unicorn is also a procreative symbol of the Logos.

Here arises the question why the birth of a hero always had to take place under such strange symbolic circumstances? It might also be imagined that a hero arose from ordinary surroundings and gradually grew out of his inferior environment, perhaps with a thousand troubles and dangers. (And, indeed, this motive is by no means strange in the hero myth.) It might be said that superstition demands strange conditions of birth and generation; but why does it demand them?

The answer to this question is: that the birth of the hero, as a rule, is not that of an ordinary mortal, but is a rebirth from the mother-spouse; hence it occurs under mysterious ceremonies. Therefore, in the very beginning, lies the motive of the two mothers of the hero. As Rank[639] has shown us through many examples, the hero is often obliged to experience exposure, and upbringing by foster parents, and in this manner he acquires the two mothers. A striking example is the relation of Hercules to Hera. In the Hiawatha epic Wenonah dies after the birth and Nokomis takes her place. Maya dies after the birth[640] and Buddha is given a stepmother. The stepmother is sometimes an animal (the she-wolf of Romulus and Remus, etc.). The twofold mother may be replaced by the motive of twofold birth, which has attained a lofty significance in the Christian mythology; namely, through baptism, which, as we have seen, represents rebirth. Thus man is born not merely in a commonplace manner, but also born again in a mysterious manner, by means of which he becomes a participator of the kingdom of God, of immortality. Any one may become a hero in this way who is generated anew through his own mother, because only through her does he share in immortality. Therefore, it happened that the death of Christ on the cross, which creates universal salvation, was understood as “baptism”; that is to say, as rebirth through the second mother, the mysterious tree of death. Christ says:

“But I have a baptism to be baptized with: and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”—Luke xii: 50.

He interprets his death agony symbolically as birth agony.

The motive of the two mothers suggests the thought of self-rejuvenation, and evidently expresses the fulfilment of the wish that it might be possible for the mother to bear me again; at the same time, applied to the heroes, it means one is a hero who is borne again by her who has previously been his mother; that is to say, a hero is he who may again produce himself through his mother.

The countless suggestions in the history of the procreation of the heroes indicate the latter formulations. Hiawatha’s father first overpowered the mother under the symbol of the bear; then himself becoming a god, he procreates the hero. What Hiawatha had to do as hero, Nokomis hinted to him in the legend of the origin of the moon; he is forcibly to throw his mother upwards (or throw downwards?); then she would become pregnant by this act of violence and could bring forth a daughter. This rejuvenated mother would be allotted, according to the Egyptian rite, as a daughter-wife to the sun-god, the father of his mother, for self-reproduction. What action Hiawatha takes in this regard we shall see presently. We have already studied the behavior of the pre-Asiatic gods related to Christ. Concerning the pre-existence of Christ, the Gospel of St. John is full of this thought. Thus the speech of John the Baptist:

“This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me; for he was before me.”—John i: 30.

Also the beginning of the gospel is full of deep mythologic significance:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

(3) “All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

(4) “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

(5) “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it not.

(6) “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

(7) “The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light.

(8) “He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

(9) “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

This is the proclamation of the reappearing light, the reborn sun, which formerly was, and which will be again. In the baptistry at Pisa, Christ is represented bringing the tree of life to man; his head is surrounded by a sun halo. Over this relief stand the words INTROITUS SOLIS.

Because the one born was his own procreator, the history of his procreation is strangely concealed under symbolic events, which are meant to conceal and deny it; hence the extraordinary assertion of the virgin conception. This is meant to hide the incestuous impregnation. But do not let us forget that this naïve assertion plays an unusually important part in the ingenious symbolic bridge, which is to guide the libido out from the incestuous bond to higher and more useful applications, which indicate a new kind of immortality; that is to say, immortal work.

The environment of Hiawatha’s youth is of importance:

“By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. Dark behind it rose the forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, Rose the firs with cones upon them. Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.”

In this environment Nokomis brought him up. Here she taught him the first words, and told him the first fairy tales, and the sounds of the water and the wood were intermingled, so that the child learned not only to understand man’s speech, but also that of Nature:

“At the door on summer evenings Sat the little Hiawatha; Heard the whispering of the pine-trees, Heard the lapping of the water, Sounds of music, words of wonder: ‘Minne-wawa!’[641] said the pine-trees, ‘Mudway-aushka!’[642] said the water.”

Hiawatha hears human speech in the sounds of Nature; thus he understands Nature’s speech. The wind says, “Wawa.” The cry of the wild goose is “Wawa.” Wah-wah-taysee means the small glowworm which enchants him. Thus the poet paints most beautifully the gradual gathering of external nature into the compass of the subjective,[643] and the intimate connection of the primary object to which the first lisping words were applied, and from which the first sounds were derived, with the secondary object, the wider nature which usurps imperceptibly the mother’s place, and takes possession of those sounds heard first from the mother, and also of those feelings which we all discover later in ourselves in all the warm love of Mother Nature. The later blending, whether pantheistic-philosophic or æsthetic, of the sentimental, cultured man with nature is, looked at retrospectively, a reblending with the mother, who was our primary object, and with whom we truly were once wholly one.[644] Therefore, it is not astonishing when we again see emerging in the poetical speech of a modern philosopher, Karl Joël, the old pictures which symbolize the unity with the mother, illustrated by the confluence of subject and object. In his recent book, “Seele und Welt” (1912), Joël writes as follows, in the chapter called “Primal Experience”[645]:

“I lay on the seashore, the shining waters glittering in my dreamy eyes; at a great distance fluttered the soft breeze; throbbing, shimmering, stirring, lulling to sleep comes the wave beat to the shore—or to the ear? I know not. Distance and nearness become blurred into one; without and within glide into each other. Nearer and nearer, dearer and more homelike sounds the beating of the waves; now, like a thundering pulse in my head it strikes, and now it beats over my soul, devours it, embraces it, while it itself at the same time floats out like the blue waste of waters. Yes, without and within are one. Glistening and foaming, flowing and fanning and roaring, the entire symphony of the stimuli experienced sounds in one tone, all thought becomes one thought, which becomes one with feeling; the world exhales in the soul and the soul dissolves in the world. Our small life is encircled by a great sleep—the sleep of our cradle, the sleep of our grave, the sleep of our home, from which we go forth in the morning, to which we again return in the evening; our life but the short journey, the interval between the emergence from the original oneness and the sinking back into it! Blue shimmers the infinite sea, wherein dreams the jelly fish of the primitive life, toward which without ceasing our thoughts hark back dimly through eons of existence. For every happening entails a change and a guarantee of the unity of life. At that moment when they are no longer blended together, in that instant man lifts his head, blind and dripping, from the depths of the stream of experience, from the oneness with the experience; at that moment of parting when the unity of life in startled surprise detaches the Change and holds it away from itself as something alien, at this moment of alienation the aspects of the experience have been substantialized into subject and object, and in that moment consciousness is born.”

Joël paints here, in unmistakable symbolism, the confluence of subject and object as the reunion of mother and child. The symbols agree with those of mythology, even in their details. The encircling and devouring motive is distinctly suggested. The sea, devouring the sun and giving birth to it anew, is already an old acquaintance. The moment of the rise of consciousness, the separation of subject and object is a birth; truly philosophical thought hangs with lame wings upon the few great primitive pictures of human speech, above the simple, all-surpassing greatness of which no thought can rise. The idea of the jelly fish is not “accidental.” Once when I was explaining to a patient the maternal significance of water at this contact with the mother complex, she experienced a very unpleasant feeling. “It makes me squirm,” she said, “as if I touched a jelly fish.” Here, too, the same idea! The blessed state of sleep before birth and after death is, as Joël observed, something like old shadowy memories of that unsuspecting, thoughtless state of early childhood, where as yet no opposition disturbed the peaceful flow of dawning life, to which the inner longing always draws us back again and again, and from which the active life must free itself anew with struggle and death, so that it may not be doomed to destruction. Long before Joël, an Indian chieftain had said the same thing in similar words to one of the restless wise men:

“Ah, my brother, you will never learn to know the happiness of thinking nothing and doing nothing: this is next to sleep; this is the most delightful thing there is. Thus we were before birth, thus we shall be after death.”[646]

We shall see in Hiawatha’s later fate how important his early impressions are in his choice of a wife. Hiawatha’s first deed was to kill a roebuck with his arrow:

“Dead he lay there in the forest, By the ford across the river.”

This is typical of Hiawatha’s deeds. Whatever he kills, for the most part, lies next to or in the water, sometimes half in the water and half on the land.[647] It seems that this must well be so. The later adventures will teach us why this must be so. The buck was no ordinary animal, but a magic one; that is to say, one with an additional unconscious significance. Hiawatha made for himself gloves and moccasins from its hide; the gloves imparted such strength to his arms that he could crumble rocks to dust, and the moccasins had the virtue of the seven-league boots. By enwrapping himself in the buck’s skin he really became a giant. This motive, together with the death of the animal at the ford,[648] in the water, reveals the fact that the parents are concerned, whose gigantic proportions as compared with the child are of great significance in the unconscious. The “toys of giants” is a wish inversion of the infantile phantasy. The dream of an eleven-year-old girl expresses this:

“I am as high as a church steeple; then a policeman comes. I tell him, ‘If you say anything, I will cut off your head.’”

The “policeman,” as the analysis brought out, referred to the father, whose gigantic size was over-compensated by the church steeple. In Mexican human sacrifices, the gods were represented by criminals, who were slaughtered, and flayed, and the Corybantes then clothed themselves in the bloody skins, in order to illustrate the resurrection of the gods.[649] (The snake’s casting of his skin as a symbol of rejuvenation.)

Hiawatha has, therefore, conquered his parents, primarily the mother, although in the form of a male animal (compare the bear of Mudjekeewis); and from that comes his giant’s strength. He has taken on the parent’s skin and now has himself become a great man. Now he started forth to his first great battle to fight with the father Mudjekeewis, in order to avenge his dead mother Wenonah. Naturally, under this figure of speech hides the thought that he slays the father, in order to take possession of the mother. Compare the battle of Gilgamesh with the giant Chumbaba and the ensuing conquest of Ishtar. The father, in the psychologic sense, merely represents the personification of the incest prohibition; that is to say, resistance, which defends the mother. Instead of the father, it may be a fearful animal (the great bear, the snake, the dragon, etc.) which must be fought and overcome. The hero is a hero because he sees in every difficulty of life resistance to the forbidden treasure, and fights that resistance with the complete yearning which strives towards the treasure, attainable with difficulty, or unattainable, the yearning which paralyzes and kills the ordinary man.

Hiawatha’s father is Mudjekeewis, the west wind; the battle, therefore, takes place in the west. Thence came life (impregnation of Wenonah); thence also came death (death of Wenonah). Hiawatha, therefore, fights the typical battle of the hero for rebirth in the western sea, the battle with the devouring terrible mother, this time in the form of the father. Mudjekeewis, who himself had acquired a divine nature, through his conquest of the bear, now is overpowered by his son:

“Back retreated Mudjekeewis, Rushing westward o’er the mountains, Stumbling westward down the mountains, Three whole days retreated fighting, Still pursued by Hiawatha To the doorways of the West-Wind, To the portals of the Sunset, To the earth’s remotest border, Where into the empty spaces Sinks the sun, as a flamingo Drops into her nest at nightfall.”

The “three days” are a stereotyped form representing the stay in the sea prison of night. (Twenty-first until twenty-fourth of December.) Christ, too, remained three days in the underworld. “The treasure, difficult to attain,” is captured by the hero during this struggle in the west. In this case the father must make a great concession to the son; he gives him divine nature,[650] that very wind nature, the immortality of which alone protected Mudjekeewis from death. He says to his son:

“I will share my kingdom with you, Ruler shall you be henceforward, Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin, Of the home-wind, the Keewaydin.”

That Hiawatha now becomes ruler of the home-wind has its close parallel in the Gilgamesh epic, where Gilgamesh finally receives the magic herb from the wise old Utnapishtim, who dwells in the West, which brings him safe once more over the sea to his home; but this, when he is home again, is retaken from him by a serpent.

When one has slain the father, one can obtain possession of his wife, and when one has conquered the mother, one can free one’s self.

On the return journey Hiawatha stops at the clever arrow-maker’s, who possesses a lovely daughter:

“And he named her from the river, From the water-fall he named her, Minnehaha, Laughing Water.”

When Hiawatha, in his earliest childhood dreaming, felt the sounds of water and wind press upon his ears, he recognized in these sounds of nature the speech of his mother. The murmuring pine trees on the shore of the great sea, said “Minnewawa.” And above the murmuring of the winds and the splashing of the water he found his earliest childhood dreams once again in a woman, “Minnehaha,” the laughing water. And the hero, before all others, finds in woman the mother, in order to become a child again, and, finally, to solve the riddle of immortality.

The fact that Minnehaha’s father is a skilful arrow-maker betrays him as the father of the hero (and the woman he had with him as the mother). The father of the hero is very often a skilful carpenter, or other artisan. According to an Arabian legend, Tare,[651] Abraham’s father, was a skilful master workman, who could carve arrows from any wood; that is to say, in the Arabian form of speech, he was a procreator of splendid sons.[652] Moreover, he was a maker of images of gods. Tvashtar, Agni’s father, is the maker of the world, a smith and carpenter, the discoverer of fire-boring. Joseph, the father of Jesus, was also a carpenter; likewise Kinyras, Adonis’s father, who is said to have invented the hammer, the lever, roofing and mining. Hephaestus, the father of Hermes, is an artistic master workman and sculptor. In fairy tales, the father of the hero is very modestly the traditional wood-cutter. These conceptions were also alive in the cult of Osiris. There the divine image was carved out of a tree trunk and then placed within the hollow of the tree. (Frazer: “Golden Bough,” Part IV.) In Rigveda, the world was also hewn out of a tree by the world-sculptor. The idea that the hero is his own procreator[653] leads to the fact that he is invested with paternal attributes, and reversedly the heroic attributes are given to the father. In Mânî there exists a beautiful union of the motives. He accomplishes his great labors as a religious founder, hides himself for years in a cave, he dies, is skinned, stuffed and hung up (hero). Besides he is an artist, and has a crippled foot. A similar union of motives is found in Wieland, the smith.

Hiawatha kept silent about what he saw at the old arrow-maker’s on his return to Nokomis, and he did nothing further to win Minnehaha. But now something happened, which, if it were not in an Indian epic, would rather be sought in the history of a neurosis. Hiawatha introverted his libido; that is to say, he fell into an extreme resistance against the “real sexual demand” (Freud); he built a hut for himself in the wood, in order to fast there and to experience dreams and visions. For the first three days he wandered, as once in his earliest youth, through a forest and looked at all the animals and plants:

“‘Master of life!’ he cried, desponding, ‘Must our lives depend on these things?’”

The question whether our lives must depend upon “these things” is very strange. It sounds as if life were derived from these things; that is to say, from nature in general. Nature seems suddenly to have assumed a very strange significance. This phenomenon can be explained only through the fact that a great amount of libido was stored up and now is given to nature. As is well known, men of even dull and prosy minds, in the springtime of love, suddenly become aware of nature, and even make poems about it. But we know that libido, prevented from an actual way of transference, always reverts to an earlier way of transference. Minnehaha, the laughing water, is so clearly an allusion to the mother that the secret yearning of the hero for the mother is powerfully touched. Therefore, without having undertaken anything, he goes home to Nokomis; but there again he is driven away, because Minnehaha already stands in his path.

He turns, therefore, even further away, into that early youthful period, the tones of which recall Minnehaha most forcibly to his thoughts, where he learnt to hear the mother-sounds in the sounds of nature. In this very strange revival of the impressions of nature we recognize a regression to those earliest and strongest nature impressions which stand next to the subsequently extinguished, even stronger, impressions which the child received from the mother. The glamour of this feeling for her is transferred to other objects of the childish environment (father’s house, playthings, etc.), from which later those magic blissful feelings proceed, which seem to be peculiar to the earliest childish memories. When, therefore, Hiawatha hides himself in the lap of nature, it is really the mother’s womb, and it is to be expected that he will emerge again new-born in some form.

Before turning to this new creation arising from introversion, there is still a further significance of the preceding question to be considered: whether life is dependent upon “these things”? Life may depend upon these things in the degree that they serve for nourishment. We must infer in this case that suddenly the question of nutrition came very near the hero’s heart. (This possibility will be thoroughly proven in what follows.) The question of nutrition, indeed, enters seriously into consideration. First, because regression to the mother necessarily revives that special path of transference; namely, that of nutrition through the mother. As soon as the libido regresses to the presexual stage, there we may expect to see the function of nutrition and its symbols put in place of the sexual function. Thence is derived an essential root of the displacement from below upwards (Freud), because, in the presexual stage, the principal value belongs not to the genitals, but to the mouth. Secondly, because the hero fasted, his hunger becomes predominant. Fasting, as is well known, is employed to silence sexuality; also, it expresses symbolically the resistance against sexuality, translated into the language of the presexual stage. On the fourth day of his fast the hero ceased to address himself to nature; he lay exhausted, with half-closed eyes, upon his couch, sunk deep in dreams, the picture of extreme introversion.

We have already seen that, in such circumstances, an infantile internal equivalent for reality appears, in the place of external life and reality. This is also the case with Hiawatha:

“And he saw a youth approaching, Dressed in garments green and yellow, Coming through the purple twilight, Through the splendor of the sunset; Plumes of green bent o’er his forehead, And his hair was soft and golden.”

This remarkable apparition reveals himself in the following manner to Hiawatha:

“From the Master of Life descending, I, the friend of man, Mondamin, Come to warn you and instruct you, How by struggle and by labor You shall gain what you have prayed for. Rise up from your bed of branches; Rise, O youth, and wrestle with me!”

Mondamin is the maize: a god, who is eaten, arising from Hiawatha’s introversion. His hunger, taken in a double sense, his longing for the nourishing mother, gives birth from his soul to another hero, the edible maize, the son of the earth mother. Therefore, he again arises at sunset, symbolizing the entrance into the mother, and in the western sunset glow he begins again the mystic struggle with the self-created god, the god who has originated entirely from the longing for the nourishing mother. The struggle is again the struggle for liberation from this destructive and yet productive longing. Mondamin is, therefore, equivalent to the mother, and the struggle with him means the overpowering and impregnation of the mother. This interpretation is entirely proven by a myth of the Cherokees, “who invoke it (the maize) under the name of ‘The Old Woman,’ in allusion to a myth that it sprang from the blood of an old woman killed by her disobedient sons”:[654]

“Faint with famine, Hiawatha Started from his bed of branches, From the twilight of his wigwam Forth into the flush of sunset Came, and wrestled with Mondamin; At his touch he felt new courage Throbbing in his brain and bosom, Felt new life and hope and vigor Run through every nerve and fibre.”

The battle at sunset with the god of the maize gives Hiawatha new strength; and thus it must be, because the fight for the individual depths, against the paralyzing longing for the mother, gives creative strength to men. Here, indeed, is the source of all creation, but it demands heroic courage to fight against these forces and to wrest from them the “treasure difficult to attain.” He who succeeds in this has, in truth, attained the best. Hiawatha wrestles with himself for his creation.[655] The struggle lasts again the charmed three days. The fourth day, just as Mondamin prophesied, Hiawatha conquers him, and Mondamin sinks to the ground in death. As Mondamin previously desired, Hiawatha digs his grave in mother earth, and soon afterwards from this grave the young and fresh maize grows for the nourishment of mankind.

Concerning the thought of this fragment, we have therein a beautiful parallel to the mystery of Mithra, where first the battle of the hero with his bull occurs. Afterwards Mithra carries in “transitus” the bull into the cave, where he kills him. From this death all fertility grows, all that is edible.[656] The cave corresponds to the grave. The same idea is represented in the Christian mysteries, although generally in more beautiful human forms. The soul struggle of Christ in Gethsemane, where he struggles with himself in order to complete his work, then the “transitus,” the carrying of the cross,[657] where he takes upon himself the symbol of the destructive mother, and therewith takes himself to the sacrificial grave, from which, after three days, he triumphantly arises; all these ideas express the same fundamental thoughts. Also, the symbol of eating is not lacking in the Christian mystery. Christ is a god who is eaten in the Lord’s Supper. His death transforms him into bread and wine, which we partake of in grateful memory of his great deed.[658] The relation of Agni to the Somadrink and that of Dionysus to wine[659] must not be omitted here. An evident parallel is Samson’s rending of the lion, and the subsequent inhabitation of the dead lion by honey bees, which gives rise to the well-known German riddle:

“Speise ging von dem Fresser und Süssigkeit von dem Starken (Food went from the glutton and sweet from the strong).”[660]

In the Eleusinian mysteries these thoughts seem to have played a rôle. Besides Demeter and Persephone, Iakchos is a chief god of the Eleusinian cult; he was the “puer æternus,” the eternal boy, of whom Ovid says the following:

“Tu puer æternus, tu formosissimus alto Conspiceris cœlo tibi, cum sine cornibus astas, Virgineum caput est,” etc.[661]

In the great Eleusinian festival procession the image of Iakchos was carried. It is not easy to say which god is Iakchos, possibly a boy, or a new-born son, similar to the Etrurian Tages, who bears the surname “the freshly ploughed boy,” because, according to the myth, he arose from the furrow of the field behind the peasant, who was ploughing. This idea shows unmistakably the Mondamin motive. The plough is of well-known phallic meaning; the furrow of the field is personified by the Hindoos as woman. The psychology of this idea is that of a coitus, referred back to the presexual stage (stage of nutrition). The son is the edible fruit of the field. Iakchos passes, in part, as son of Demeter or of Persephone, also appropriately as consort of Demeter. (Hero as procreator of himself.) He is also called τῆς Δήμητρος δαίμων (Δαίμων equals libido, also Mother libido.) He was identified with Dionysus, especially with the Thracian Dionysus-Zagreus, of whom a typical fate of rebirth was related. Hera had goaded the Titans against Zagreus, who, assuming many forms, sought to escape them, until they finally took him when he had taken on the form of a bull. In this form he was killed (Mithra sacrifice) and dismembered, and the pieces were thrown into a cauldron; but Zeus killed the Titans by lightning, and swallowed the still-throbbing heart of Zagreus. Through this act he gave him existence once more, and Zagreus as Iakchos again came forth.

Iakchos carries the torch, the phallic symbol of procreation, as Plato testifies. In the festival procession, the sheaf of corn, the cradle of Iakchos, was carried. (λῖκνον, mystica vannus Iacchi.) The Orphic legend[662] relates that Iakchos was brought up by Persephone, when, after three years’ slumber in the λῖκνον,[663] he awoke. This statement distinctly suggests the Mondamin motive. The 20th of Boedromion (the month Boedromion lasts from about the 5th of September to the 5th of October) is called Iakchos, in honor of the hero. On the evening of this day the great torchlight procession took place on the seashore, in which the quest and lament of Demeter was represented. The rôle of Demeter, who, seeking her daughter, wanders over the whole earth without food or drink, has been taken over by Hiawatha in the Indian epic. He turns to all created things without obtaining an answer. As Demeter first learns of her daughter from the subterranean Hecate, so does Hiawatha first find the one sought for, Mondamin,[664] in the deepest introversion (descent to the mother). Hiawatha produces from himself, Mondamin, as a mother produces the son. The longing for the mother also includes the producing mother (first devouring, then birth-giving). Concerning the real contents of the mysteries, we learn through the testimony of Bishop Asterius, about 390 A. D., the following:

“Is not there (in Eleusis) the gloomiest descent, and the most solemn communion of the hierophant and the priestess; between him and her alone? Are the torches not extinguished, and does not the vast multitude regard as their salvation that which takes place between the two in the darkness?”[665]

That points undoubtedly to a ritual marriage, which was celebrated subterraneously in mother earth. The Priestess of Demeter seems to be the representative of the earth goddess, perhaps the furrow of the field.[666] The descent into the earth is also the symbol of the mother’s womb, and was a widespread conception under the form of cave worship. Plutarch relates of the Magi that they sacrificed to Ahriman, εἰς τόπον ἀνήλιον.[667] Lukian lets the magician Mithrobarzanes εἰς χωρίον ἔρημον καὶ ὑλῶδες καὶ ἀνήλιον,[668] descend into the bowels of the earth. According to the testimony of Moses of the Koran, the sister Fire and the brother Spring were worshipped in Armenia in a cave. Julian gave an account from the Attis legend of a κατάβασις εἰς ἄντρον,[669] from whence Cybele brings up her son lover, that is to say, gives birth to him.[670] The cave of Christ’s birth, in Bethlehem (‘House of Bread’), is said to have been an Attis spelæum.

A further Eleusinian symbolism is found in the festival of Hierosgamos, in the form of the mystic chests, which, according to the testimony of Clemens of Alexandria, may have contained pastry, salt and fruits. The synthema (confession) of the mystic transmitted by Clemens is suggestive in still other directions:

“I have fasted, I have drunk of the barleydrink, I have taken from the chest and after I have labored, I have placed it back in the basket, and from the basket into the chest.”

The question as to what lay in the chest is explained in detail by Dieterich.[671] The labor he considers a phallic activity, which the mystic has to perform. In fact, representations of the mystic basket are given, wherein lies a phallus surrounded by fruits.[672] Upon the so-called Lovatelli tomb vase, the sculptures of which are understood to be Eleusinian ceremonies, it is shown how a mystic caressed the serpent entwining Demeter. The caressing of the fear animal indicates a religious conquering of incest.[673] According to the testimony of Clemens of Alexandria, a serpent was in the chest. The serpent in this connection is naturally of phallic nature, the phallus which is forbidden in relation to the mother. Rohde mentions that in the Arrhetophories, pastry, in the form of phalli and serpents, were thrown into the cave near the Thesmophorion. This custom was a petition for the bestowal of children and harvest.[674] The snake also plays a large part in initiations under the remarkable title ὁ διὰ κόλπου θεός.[675] Clemens observes that the symbol of the Sabazios mysteries is ὁ διὰ κόλπων θεός, δράκων δὲ ἐστι καὶ οὗτος διελκόμενος τοῦ κόλπου τῶν τελουμένων.[676]

Through Arnobius we learn:

“Aureus coluber in sinum demittitur consecratis et eximitur rursus ab inferioribus partibus atque imis.”[677]

In the Orphic Hymn 52, Bacchus is invoked by ὑποκόλπιε,[678] which indicates that the god enters into man as if through the female genitals.[679] According to the testimony of Hippolytus, the hierophant in the mystery exclaimed ἱερον ἔτεκε πότνια κοῦρον, Βριμὼ βριμόν (the revered one has brought forth a holy boy, Brimos from Brimo). This Christmas gospel, “Unto us a son is born,” is illustrated especially through the tradition[680] that the Athenians “secretly show to the partakers in the Epoptia, the great and wonderful and most perfect Epoptic mystery, a mown stalk of wheat.”[681]

The parallel for the motive of death and resurrection is the motive of losing and finding. The motive appears in religious rites in exactly the same connection, namely, in spring festivities similar to the Hierosgamos, where the image of the god was hidden and found again. It is an uncanonical tradition that Moses left his father’s house when twelve years old to teach mankind. In a similar manner Christ is lost by his parents, and they find him again as a teacher of wisdom, just as in the Mohammedan legend Moses and Joshua lose the fish, and in his place Chidher, the teacher of wisdom, appears (like the boy Jesus in the temple); so does the corn god, lost and believed to be dead, suddenly arise again from his mother into renewed youth. (That Christ was laid in the manger is suggestive of fodder. Robertson, therefore, places the manger as parallel to the liknon.)

We understand from these accounts why the Eleusinian mysteries were for the mystic so rich in comfort for the hope of a better world. A beautiful Eleusinian epitaph shows this:

“Truly, a beautiful secret is proclaimed by the blessed Gods! Mortality is not a curse, but death a blessing!”

The hymn to Demeter[682] in the mysteries also says the same:

“Blessed is he, the earth-born man, who hath seen this! Who hath not shared in these divine ceremonies, He hath an unequal fate in the obscure darkness of death.”

Immortality is inherent in the Eleusinian symbol; in a church song of the nineteenth century by Samuel Preiswerk we discover it again:

“The world is yours, Lord Jesus, The world, on which we stand, Because it is thy world It cannot perish. Only the wheat, before it comes Up to the light in its fertility, Must die in the bosom of the earth First freed from its own nature.